Yes, it snowed last Saturday, and some of it actually stuck around for a while. I went out briefly for a bit and tried to take some photos:
Yes, I realize these are not fantastic photos. Does any one have any advice on taking photos of snow (especially falling snow) or nature in general using a digital camera?
Along with a lot of Church Hill denizens, Tim and I headed to Que Pasa on its opening night last Monday. We were hesitant to visit a restaurant on its opening night, but we wanted to show our support for our new neighborhood establishment (and now Que Pasa is the closest restaurant to us). Our friend Leigh was the first person in the restaurant for dinnertime and was seated at the bar when we arrived. She was disappointed that Que Pasa did not have a liquor license yet, but we expected this to be the case. Leigh did receive a complimentary plate of plantain spiders (an appetizer). We tried them and they were quite good.
Since the restaurant was empty, we were told to select a table wherever we liked. We sat right near the fire since it was so very cold outside. We were shortly thereafter joined by the remainder of our party, Jake and Susan. There seemed to be only one waiter in the place, and he was obviously extremely inexperienced or just plain unexperienced. Now, I’m not expecting perfect service on opening night by any means. But this waiter seemed to be lacking basic common sense – had he never eaten at a restaurant before? I also think that if you are going to have only one waiter at a restaurant, you need to compensate by hiring someone with some good experience or a great attitude. Our waiter had neither: he messed up our order; brought the food at different times; could not answer simple questions (and it never occurred to him to ask someone else for the answer until I finally said, “Can you please ask someone?”) (and, if you know me, I never fuss or complain or demand at restaurants) (just afterward on my blog and to my friends). Mind you, I know others have commented that they had poor service that night at Que Pasa but that it was unexpectedly crowded. However, we were the first, and for a time, only customers in the restaurant when our orders were taken and the questioning happened. The waiter never checked back with us after our food arrived. We had to basically run after him to finally get our check and then we had to flag down one of the owners in order to pay our check.
But, in between servings of bad service were servings of yummy food. The menu at Que Pasa is limited but features several soups and salads, and entrees of chicken, pork, fish, and beef. Susan and Leigh (and Jake as it turned out since he received the incorrect order) all had a bowl of black bean soup. It was thick and chock full of green onions and peppers. All of them polished off their bowls. Tim and I both ordered flat bread stuffed with pork, black beans, peppers, rice, and cheese. We both enjoyed the stuffed quesadilla. The meat was tender and seasoned lightly. The beans, rice, and vegetables were fresh. We also received sides of plantains and tostones. The tostones were not to my liking – fried and too dry and salty. The plantains however were scrumptious – sweet and dreamy. Jake had an entree of pork (I’m not sure that was actually what he ordered), also with sides of plantains and tostones. He liked it and it looked tender although plain.
Except for the service issues, we enjoyed Que Pasa. Of course we will go back – it’s only 2 blocks away! Hopefully, some of these issues will get ironed out. I am not going to give it a rating yet but check back later.
Many of my co-workers are feverishly running around the Virginia General Assembly during this time of the year, working on legislation that is important to our mission. The running joke around the office yesterday concerned HB1452 titled, Display of objects or devices representing or resembling genitalia on motor vehicles. Clearly, this is an important bill that needs to be addressed immediately by our hard-working legislators. Full text of the bill is as follows: “No person shall display upon or equip any motor vehicle with any object or device that depicts, represents, or resembles human genitalia, regardless of size or scale.”
In second place for absurd legislation is a bill sponsored by my own representative, Delegate Jennifer McClellan. HB334, entitled Cats; Class 5 Felony to steal, makes it a felony to steal a cat. Currently, it is only a misdemeanor to steal a cat, whereas it is a felony to steal other animals. Cats just want equal protection under the law. The full-text of this one is a classic example of wasted energy in creating laws:
Any person who shall be guilty of the larceny of a dog, cat, horse, pony, mule, cow, steer, bull or calf shall be guilty of a Class 5 felony; and any person who shall be guilty of the larceny of any poultry of the value of $5 dollars or more, but of the value of less than $200, or of a sheep, lamb, swine, or goat, of the value of less than $200, shall be guilty of a Class 6 felony.
Why are sheep, lamb, swine, goats, or a chicken worth more than $5 valued more under the law than my beloved Fido?
Celice and Joseph, a middle-aged couple, lie murdered in the sand dunes of Baritone Bay in this novel by Jim Crace. Baritone Bay is where Celice and Joseph met as research students in the natural sciences, approximately 30 years before they are murdered. Crace uses an objective voice to describe pivotal moments in the evolution of their relationship as well as the destruction of their physical bodies:
The gull became less cautious when, after several timid sorties, the bodies failed to strike at it. It pecked at one of Celice’s shoes, which had been tossed a little distance from their patch of grass. It lifted Joseph’s underpants, misled by what it took to be the smell of fish . . . The flies lined up like fishermen along the banks of the bodies’ open wounds.
At first I did not care for Crace’s unsentimental portrayal of Joseph’s and Celice’s dead bodies, their daughter’s search for her missing parents, and descriptions of delicate moments that framed a lifetime of marriage, although it was effective in making me feel that these two people, in the scheme of the natural world (like all of us), do not matter. The gulls will peck, the flies will land, regardless of what you do or whether you are happy. Were Joseph and Celice happy? From minimal flashbacks, we get the sense that they were not necessarily happy but perhaps content, their lives usually flowing smoothly and regularly in set patterns through time.
The unsentimental tone grew in appeal as I neared the end of the short novel. The objectivity made me calm, made me feel the waves hitting the dunes surrounding the bodies, made me hear the spooky hum of Baritone Bay, things that Joseph and Celice would no longer experience because they were dead. It was not tragic that they were murdered, it was just the end of their time.
The land is conscienceless. It has no ceremony. It cannot rise to the occasion, as people must, when there’s a funeral. The best that it could do was wash its heavy waters on the shore, and stir the dunes where Joseph and Celice had died with its grey wind and let the daylight pop and crack with smaller lives than theirs. What was their final legacy? A rectangle of faded grass and, where the bodies had decayed for six days of grace, a crushed and formless smudge of almost white where time and night had robbed the lissom of its green.
As you can tell from the excerpts above, Crace is a gifted writer with excellent, flowing word choice. The tone took some time to get used to, but it was worth it to experience the work as a whole. Being Dead grows in my esteem the further I get from reading it.
Rating: 
I read an Op/Ed by Paul Krugman today about the presidential candidates’ reactions to the approaching recession. I was most surprised about his synopsis and assessment of Barack Obama’s plan for economic recovery:
As was the case with his health care plan, which fell short of universal coverage, his stimulus proposal is similar to those of the other Democratic candidates, but tilted to the right.
For example, the Obama plan appears to contain none of the alternative energy initiatives that are in both the Edwards and Clinton proposals, and emphasizes across-the-board tax cuts over both aid to the hardest-hit families and help for state and local governments. I know that Mr. Obama’s supporters hate to hear this, but he really is less progressive than his rivals on matters of domestic policy.
I was surprised that Krugman labelled Obama as “less progressive” than his Democratic rivals (especially Hillary Clinton, who often seems middle-of-the-road to me). So I went to Obama’s web-site to research a little more on his economic proposals. (As an aside, I truly dislike his web-site – the home page requires you to key in your e-mail address and zip code. You can get around this (I did) but it is annoying. John Edwards’ site has something similar, but at least it has a big red button that says “skip sign-on.” Hillary Clinton’s has a sign-on on her home page but also has access to all the other available menus.) Here is his blurb on tax cuts:
Barack Obama will restore fairness to the tax code and provide 150 million workers the tax relief they deserve. Obama will create a new “Making Work Pay” tax credit of up to $500 per person, or $1,000 per working family. This refundable income tax credit will provide direct relief to American families who face the regressive payroll tax system. It will offset the payroll tax on the first $8,100 of their earnings while still preserving the important principle of a dedicated revenue source for Social Security. The “Making Work Pay” tax credit will completely eliminate income taxes for 10 million Americans.
I couldn’t discover who exactly will be able to take advantage of the “Making Work Pay” tax credit – will everyone? Krugman implies that everyone will, but that is not clear from Obama’s plan. Actually, a lot of Obama’s economic plan consists of tax credits – a Universal Mortgage Credit and the American Opportunity Tax Credit (for college tuition), for example. Obama’s plan also calls for expansion of the Earned Income and the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credits. Tax credits – is that all Obama has to offer?
The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova is a modernization of the Dracula story. We learn about the adventures of Paul and Helen as they investigate the history of Dracula and his possible actual existence in the modern world. In their pursuits, Helen and Paul must travel throughout Eastern Europe, avoiding the dangers of Dracula and his devoted minions as well as Communist government officials (most of the action takes place in the 1970s).
Helen and Paul begin their investigations searching for Paul’s doctoral adviser, Rossi, who also happens to be Helen’s father. Rossi is kidnapped by Dracula because he has successfully researched the Dracula legend. In The Historian, Dracula is portrayed as a cruel yet intellectual figure, who forces Rossi to become his librarian, cataloging his impressive array of ancient and rare tomes collected throughout the ages.
The narrator of the story is Paul and Helen’s daughter. She is abandoned by Helen at a young age and believes her mother is dead. In fact, Helen has been serendipitously hunting Dracula for years. At the climax of the novel, the small family is reunited and Dracula is defeated.
The Historian is relatively well-written although not remarkably so. A lot of the plot is revealed through the use of letters which is often unbelievable – who writes such detailed and long letters, especially in the midst of peril? But without the detail, the story will not work. Some of the conclusions that the protagonists draw in their search for Dracula seem contrived, but not overly so and not all of them. The novel was relatively easy to read and somewhat of a page turner (although a bit dark and historic in nature). I recommend the novel for a good, although not impressive, read.
Rating:
Happy New Year! Although it is the beginning of the year in the Western World, there is still a little time until the end of the Chinese year. We are currently wrapping up the Year of the Pig. There was an interesting article in the Times-Dispatch today about Smithfield, the painting pig (he is also known as Pig-casso). Smithfield has had a turbulent year, battling a recurrence of cancer that had him initially laid out four years ago. You will be glad to hear that Smithfield is recovering nicely from his recent bout, although he has a large hole in his nose due to the removal of a cancerous tumor. I chortled when I read that Smithfield benefited from acupuncture – acupuncture on a pig!
The Year of the Rat begins on February 7. Tim and I were just discussing whether or not we should host a Chinese New Year party. What do you think? Will you come? We could invite the mice living below our house to join us (for authenticity). We would serve Chinese food for your consumption. Please come!
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